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Another season in the books.  The season couldn’t end soon enough for our mixed league and NL-only teams as our success seemed to be limited to AL-only where – as late as September 15th – we had a shot at winning all 3 of our leagues.

We learned a lot during the season.  Little to nothing that will help us for next year of course – unless all the ‘perts we play against were comatose this year and will let Mike Trout pass to us in the late rounds.

Below are our league summaries except for the RCL Expert League (we will cover that in another post).  Congrats to the victors and thanks to all the leagues that invited us to participate.

LABR – 15 Team Mixed (Snake)

Finish 9th (75 pts)
@ ASB 11th (64.5 pts)
1st place Tie – Ray Murphy of BaseballHQ / Jonah Keri of Grantland (109 pts)
Last place Doug Anderson of RotoExperts (43 pts)
1/4 season Tweet Why Lincecum over Greinke and Weaver? Where are A-Gonz and Nellie’s HRs? Nice comeback, Rios. Wish we picked Beltran. Feb drafts suck.
All-Star Break Tweet FU Lincecum. U2 Ichiro. Play a full week Yoenis. Play at all Longoria. That early July surge to 80 pts sure was nice. Here’s hoping for 8th.
End of Season First 5 picks doomed us (A-Gonz, Longo, Lincecum, Cruz, Asdrubal).  Good value picks (Rios, Hill, Jim Johnson, Rosario) balanced out by draft whiffs (Lincecum, Storen, Carp, Chacin, Peacock, Hultzen). Draft whiffs left us with 4 drafted SPs and Colby Lewis injury made it 3 (Lincecum, MadBum, Anibal).  Even with Jarrod Parker and Richard providing FA value, ended up with only 5 points b/w Wins and K’s.

Y! Friends & Family – 13 team Mixed (Snake)

Our Place 10th (53 pts)
@ ASB 8th (70.5 pts)
1st place Andy Behrens – Yahoo! (113 pts) – 13.5 pts ahead of WSJ’s Micahel Salfino
Last place Brandon Funston – Yahoo! (38 pts)
1/4 season tweet Lee has 0 wins?! Middle rounds killed us-Votto/McCutch/C. Lee/CC/A. Jones solid top 5. Shitty closer luck (1 pt in SV), Walker over Altuve?!
All-Star Break tweet Gained 11.5 pts in 2nd quarter. Still in striking distance. Love Dread Pirate. Welcome back Marmol. Need big 2Hs from Lee, CC, and Berkman
End of Season Pathetic offense (15 pts out of 65 max) despite Dread Pirate and Adam Jones.  No other hitter delivered draft pick value with Berkman a complete whiff (three picks before Posey).  Votto’s 2nd half sure didn’t help. Reddick, Frazier, and Salvador Perez pickups not nearly enough.  Team was drafted to be great at pitching but awful Win luck (3rd least wins despite 3rd in ERA and 2nd in K’s), weak Saves (5 pts), and injuries (Beachy, Lewis) doomed that.

DraftDay – 10 team AL (Auction)

Finish 2nd (76 pts)
@ ASB 3rd (67 pts)
1st place Derek Carty – Baseball Prospectus (79 pts)
Last place Non-bloggers/poker playing tandem (25.5 pts)
1/4 season tweet A-Gonz/Longo – ugh. Fickin’ Lester. Brutal closer luck (Only 3 SVs! Walden quick axe, F-Cord, Janssen on bench for 4 SVs, K-Rob hurt).
All-Star Break tweet Crazy good/lucky with SPs so far. Peavy/Sale/Colby as a 1-2-3 with Quintana/McAllister also helping mask Lester. Trout amazing. Need Longo.
End of Season Our offense started the year slowly but gained steam with Trout (nice return on $4!), a trade for Jeter, and the returns from injury by Longoria and Sal Perez.  A-Gon/Granderson/Adam Jones made for a solid foundation and Brandon Moss was a huge FA pickup.  Had very good fortune with ERA/WHIP/K thanks to surprise seasons by draft picks Sale, Peavy, and Milone + FA picks McCallister and Quintana.  But had AWFUL fortune with Wins – we finished with a 3.5 (out of 10) in Wins despite being third in Quality Starts.  That doesn’t do it justice.  We had 117 QS.  The next team totals were 107, 98, 97, 97, and 96.  Among the 65 AL SPs with 100+ IP this year, we managed to have 6 of the bottom 14 in W/QS ratio.  Sure Millwood and McCallister were on bad teams but Peavy, Quintana, and Colby Lewis were on playoff/near-playoff teams.  Peavy had 23 QS and 11 Wins – no other starter in the AL had a QS to Win gap greater than 8.  (Drafting Price instead of Lester would’ve helped too.)  If our offense or Win totals were stronger, we would’ve traded for Saves (3 pts) to turn around our bad luck with closers (Jordan Walden, K-Rob gets injured immediately after inheriting the role, Janssen having a very low Save total).  Despite all that whining, this was one of the most enjoyable leagues and we did make solid $ coming in 2nd place.  Mike Trout – drinks are on me next time you’re in Austin.

FantasyPros911 12-team AL (no public link)

Finish 4th (75.5 pts)
@ ASB 2nd (86 pts)
1st place Nick Minnix – KFFL (93 pts) – 15.5 pts ahead of Marc Edelman of SportsJudge.com.
Last place Patrick DiCaprio – FantasyPros911 (33.5 pts)
1/4 season tweet Tied for 2nd place (2.5 pts off lead).  Great offense so far led by overperformance by Adam Jones, Josh Reddick, and Kyle Seager.  Pitching has been a disappointment so far aside from Milone and Capps.  Need Lester and Scherzer to pitch well and hopefully have surplus Saves to trade at some point between Capps, Bailey, and Janssen.
All-Star Break tweet Offense fading a bit but a healthy Markakis should help. Pitching staff ended 1st half on roll.  Can win if my pitching stays hot.
End of Season We were in 2nd place with 84 pts as late as mid-September.  Our over-performing offense regressed in the 2nd half aided by injuries to Teixeira and Markakis and the reduced playing time of Brennan Boesch.  Our pitching picked up in the 2nd half thanks to Scherzer’s rebound + investing most of our FAAB in Greinke.  It netted out to a team that was good but not great in all categories (6-9.5 pts in all categories except WHIP).  One good free agent pickup on offense (e.g., Brandon Moss) would’ve gotten us a handful of points.  The only way we are in striking distance of repeat victor Nick Minnix is if our $4 Mike Trout bid didn’t get outbid (he went for $6).

CBSSports 12 team AL (no public link)

Finish 1st (83 pts)
@ ASB 1st (83.5 pts) – 3.5 pts lead
1st place Razzball – 9 pts ahead of Dean Peterson of Stats LLC (you should give us free data!)
Last place Jeff Boggis – Fantasy Sports Empires (35.5 pts)
1/4 season tweet Miracle pitching led by Peavy, Sale, and Jim Johnson.  Lineup stitched together after string of injuries (Longoria, Morneau, Reynolds, Cespedes, Iannetta).
All-Star Break tweet Miracle pitching continues – only 4.5 points from a perfect 60. Can only go down. Hopefully offense makes up pts. Healthy Longo would help.
End of Season Ridiculous that this was our one winning team when we thought this was our worst draft.  We managed 46 pitching points – despite whiffing on 7 of our 13 drafted pitchers – thanks to Sale, Peavy, and Jim Johnson (if only we picked him instead of Walden in our other 2 AL-only teams).  MRs (K-Rob, Crow, Furbush, Doolittle) helped our K’s and ratios while mediocre Yankee pitchers (Pettitte, Nova, Garcia) helped get us some cheap wins.  Our offense was tied for 4th best despite the Longoria injury (killer in 12-team AL to lose your best hitter) thanks to a solid (but not great) draft with Cespedes (+$10) and Morneau (+$8) our best values (yeah, Morneau…eat it, Grey!).  Got massive FA value with Michael Saunders (ended at $18) and got decent performance out of Russ Canzler and Jayson Nix.  Makes for our 2nd victory in a CBSSports league in 3 tries (won last year’s NL, lost this year’s NL).

CBSSports 12 team NL (no public link)

Finish 9th (52 pts)
@ ASB 7th (58.5 pts)
1st place Al Melchior of CBSSports (107) – 21 pts ahead of Bernie Pleskoff of Rotowire (86 pts)
Last place Andrew Fiorentino of Rotowire (25.5 pts)
1/4 season tweet Brutal CI luck (Gaby, Zimmerman, Sandoval), SP has disappointed (Anibal, Nolasco solid…D. Hudson + Cahill blech). Casilla saved our ‘pen after Guerra got replaced.
All-Star Break tweet Offense is ok, should be better. C’mon J-Up & Zimm. Quantity over quality SP strategy backfired. Dickey, Capuano, or Miley would’ve helped.
End of season We went with a similar strategy as last year – invest heavy on offense, go with SP quantity vs quality.  Our offense didn’t dominate as much as hoped (37 points), mainly due to weak AVG and a lack of speed.  High value picks (Hill, Kubel) were undermined by injuries/underperformance by our more expensive picks (Sandoval, J-Up, Gaby Sanchez).  The pitching was a fiasco (15 out of 60 points) as our de facto ace (Daniel Hudson) did nothing and Anibal was mediocre and then traded to the AL (where his stats don’t count in this NL-only league).  Cahill, Harang, and Nolasco all did okay but we would’ve needed a Dickey or Miley to overcome losing Hudson.  If we ran 1000 simulations of this CBS NL League and the CBS AL League (which we won), I bet the NL team would have won more often.

Yahoo! Hero Sandwich – 14 team mixed (no public link)

Finish 9th (61 pts)
@ ASB 11th (62.5 pts)
1st place Rob Steingall – not sure if blogger or Y! commenter (108 pts)
Last place Mike and Marc of FantasyJudgement.com (49.5 pts)
1/4 season tweet Solid offense led by Josh Hamilton, Bruce, Moose, and Moobs overcoming Goldschmidt/Alexei/Choo disappointments.  Pitching has potential but disappointed so far – CC, Romero, Latos, Anibal, Colby, Masterson.
All-Star Break tweet Team sunk 5 spots since quarter-mark. Awful SP luck cont’d – 3 pts total in ERA/WHIP. Thx Romero and Latos! This team should’ve contended.
End of Season This was probably our strongest team coming into the season and, thus, our biggest underperformer.  The offense (39.5 pts out of 70 max) had a few great value picks (Hamilton ended up +$15, Butler +$19, Hart +$13) but we got weak performance out of our speed plays (Stubbs, Jemile Weeks, Bourjos).  The pitching is what killed this team.  A pre-season trade for Sabathia worked out as did Latos but Romero and Masterson combined for 270 IP at an atrocious 5.40/1.50 clip.  Daniel Hudson sucked for the 30 IP he was healthy, Colby got hurt, Anibal was average, and two of our three closers either sucked (Heath Bell) or were unhealthy for most of the season (Capps).

Battle of the Fantasy Gods – 14 team mixed (no public link) League run by Sky of our Fantasy Football Blog

Our Place  7th
@ ASB 3rd (90 pts)
1st place Dave Gawron of Roto Experts
Last place Paul Greco of FP911
1/4 season tweet We were in first place up until about a week ago.
All-Star Break tweet Injuries to Longoria and Beachy have hurt us, but not much since the league is shallow.  Poor streaming (there’s no benches in this league) have not helped.  Though we’re still right in thick of it.
End of Season  Longoria, Beachy, Dan Uggla, Paul Konerko’s years hurt.  Hanley and Starlin Castro didn’t help enough.  And Josh Hamilton couldn’t carry everything.  Our pitching was really what killed us though.  There were no benches but it was weekly so you had to stream 2 start pitchers every week or fall behind in Ks and Wins, and we didn’t stream effectively enough.  Damn you, Stream-o-Nator!

Blog Wars – 14 team League run by Scott, our Minor League Prospect writer

Our Place Tied for 4th (86 pts)
@ ASB 1st (111 pts)
1st place TheFantasyFix (86th)
Last place Scott Pianowski – Yahoo! (45 pts)
1/4 season tweet We’ve led the whole year.
All-Star Break tweet Hasn’t been close, and that’s with having Ike Davis as our first baseman, and having to sit Mark Reynolds for despicable play.  This is Blog Wars, but feels more like we’re the Brits and this is the Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896.
End of Season Looks like hubris might’ve gotten to Scott.  We weren’t involved with this team so not sure what led to the 2nd half struggles.